Remember I told you we were all screwed?

[Lee H]

What we need is a cull.

Not a cull on people or anything like that but a cull on all the government Quangos they have floating around.

I've read some figures for keeping quangos running and they are scary indeed. If we culled 95% of them, we would make a huge saving each year which we can then offset against our huge budgets.

Next, cull all the middle management in the NHS as all they appear to do is push pens and then quote figures about how much infections have fallen. Again, they appear to get paid over the odds for practically nothing.

[nichomach]

I'm broadly in agreement with that, Lee; we'd certainly make a saving, and the way that NHS bureaucracy's mushroomed over the last 20 years or so is somewhat barking.

[abaxas]

Next, cull all the middle management in the NHS as all they appear to do is push pens and then quote figures about how much infections have fallen. Again, they appear to get paid over the odds for practically nothing.

In times gone by I working in the NHS.

The management structure went.

Doctors
Senior managment
Middle management
Doctors and support staff.

Can anyone see a possible problem where?

[Barrichello]

What are the chances of me landing a mortgage for a house in london for 200k putting a 10% deposit for it next year summer?

That would of course depend on your income and what ever multiple the lender goes by. Keep hearing conflicting news in the press at the moment, what with no more "liar loans" one minute, then multiples increasing the next. At the moment all the "best buy" mortgages seem to favour at least a max LTV of 75%, so 10% deposit would limit your options to more favourable rates now but more relevantly could be different for you next summer - will all be about how they price in risk next year.

[Clunk]

What we need is a cull.

Club 18-30 MPs.

[nichomach]

In times gone by I working in the NHS.
The management structure went.
Doctors
Senior managment
Middle management
Doctors and support staff.
Can anyone see a possible problem where?

"problem there"?
Lo these many years ago, I worked doing clerical work in a hospital during the introduction of the famed "internal market". Seemed as though if you parked a manager anywhere overnight they'd undergo spontaneous mitosis...

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Im praying i can get a decent deal on a mortgage with 10% deposit next year summer!

[Saracen]

The problem is that a change in government will probably lead to a nasty crash; there seems to be an assumption that if we slash and burn now, we'll avoid pain later. We won't. What we WILL end up with is not merely a double-dip but a catastrophic crash. People bang on about Thatcher putting the economy to rights, but the Thatcher government's policies ended up with us enjoying a longer and deeper recession than the other Western European countries. Bluntly, shallowing out the borrowing over an extended period and transitioning gradually to debt reduction makes more sense. A slash and burn policy will simply kill economic activity, and bluntly it's more important that money keep moving through the economy than that we sort out the deficit immediately. The alternative is to stall the transition to growth and cause a further contraction. The cost of that in terms of lost jobs, lost tax revenues, increased benefit payments and the rest is something that simply doesn't bear thinking about.

You can't just look as how comparatively long or deep the recession was on Thatcher's watch and assume it was all down to her policies. You also have to look at the underlying economies of those you compare to, and the structural differences. Different things affect different economies in different ways. For instance, an economy with substantially larger house ownership is more susceptible to anything that increases interest rates because of that underlying difference. Similarly, the state of labour relations, underlying productivity and so on.

Secondly, the Tories aren't proposing slash and burn. It's merely Brown et.al. saying that they are.

The differences between them are how much you cut, what you cut, and most specifically, precisely when you start cutting at a given rate. Cut too much, or too early, or in the wrong place and you risk cutting off what limited growth we're predicted to have.

Don't cut enough, and you merely store up the pain for longer, and if it gets to the point where international finance starts getting jittery, we risk ending up with a far more prescriptive budgetary regime that will do far more short-term damage than even slash-and-burn would. If the government can't finance their existing debt, interest rates will go up (and I don't mean the BofE rate), and what it's costing us to finance our existing enormous debt will go up, possibly substantially, sucking an even greater proportion of national productivity into merely financing debt.

Brown has recently been referencing Keynes as justifying his fiscal stimulation, and that's fair enough, but he's also conveniently ignoring the fact that Keynes wouldn't have agreed with Brown's huge and protracted deficit financing that got us into this mess in the first place. He's cherry-picking the bits that suit what he's done or wants to do, and ignoring the inconvenient bits that contradict him.

People are characterising Rave as a doom-monger, but they perhaps ought to consider the alternative as the Ostrich ignoring the oncoming hurricane by sticking their heads in the sand.

Doom-mongering, in my book, is more of a Cassandra-like 'woe is me, all is disaster' bleating. That's very different from facing up to reality, and my opinion is that very many people either aren't facing up to reality or really don't see the situation.

Part of the problem is that the media harped on about doom and gloom, hypothesised a depression and that all was going to be blood and tears, and so far, by and large, it hasn't happened. Yeah, a few hundred thousand have lost their jobs, many more are on or have been on part-time hours or taken pay cuts or freezes. But .... many more have seen their mortgage payments go down, and have actually ended up with a fair bit more disposable income as a result. So unless you've lost your job, you're probably feeling quite cosy, as nothing much has changed as a result of the recession and, hey, you might well be better off. And then, we start to see signs of economic recovery. Some indicators are levelling off, some are even back in the positive, albeit tentatively.

But there's still an elephant in the economic room, and it's that debt (and deficit). And it a very big elephant, trying to hide in a small flowerbed, and if it moves, it's going to trample all over those fresh green shoots of economic recovery.

Rave is right, and people, make no mistake, we are not out of the woods yet. So far, the various stimulus packages have managed to hold off the depression and have arguably even levelled off the recession, though that's by no means certain yet. And don't judge too much by house prices. We know they're a fairly fickle indicator and say more about confidence, and a slight recovery in the availability of available finance than they do the underlying economy, and if anything happens to affect that confidence, house prices could yet take another hit.

Bear in mind a few critical facts :-

- the debt is HUGE
- the deficit has a large structural element, so the debt will get huger ( yet.
- we ARE going to be paying for that in a big way, or for a long time, or more likely, both.
- even in a recovery, unemployment rises for months afterwards. It lags.
- As a result of that last point, the automatic element of that deficit is going up and will continue to do so, and so will the overall debt.
- the stimulus package will have a price. QE will cause inflation, and tax rises and spending cuts will suppress recovery.

So far, the stimulus has worked to level things off. But the bill hasn't yet arrived in the post. When it does, it WILL hurt.

[pauldarkside]

td;dr

So far, the stimulus has worked to level things off. But the bill hasn't yet arrived in the post. When it does, it WILL hurt.

We just need the Post Office to stay on strike for longer then

[Saracen]

Wish it were that simple, Paul.

[Zak33]

and here, Rave and I stand, shoulder to shoulder.

The Used Car market boomed early this year... prices were down massively, and suddenly they started selling... so did houses... and that''s natural...but cars grounds to a halt about 3 or 4 weeks ago.. bubble burst again. but it's not a firm foundation. We are being fed delusion... it aint over. But it IS possible to make it through and shine out of the other end.

[menthel]

and here, Rave and I stand, shoulder to shoulder.

The Used Car market boomed early this year... prices were down massively, and suddenly they started selling... so did houses... and that''s natural...but cars grounds to a halt about 3 or 4 weeks ago.. bubble burst again. but it's not a firm foundation. We are being fed delusion... it aint over. But it IS possible to make it through and shine out of the other end.

All so grumpy!

We may all be up poopy creek without a paddle, but lets not wallow! I think there is a song about our situation. I will look on the bright side, anyways!

[Zak33]

.... People bang on about Thatcher putting the economy to rights, but the Thatcher government's policies ended up with us enjoying a longer and deeper recession than the other Western European countries.

and just as the Tory's lost Her, "gained " John Major, and lost all the public... that was when it was just coming good..

and Tony boy and his little tubby chum Gordon took all the credit for years of harsh decisions, blood shed at the expense of public love of themselves... Tory's made hard decisions... and Labour "managed" us through the good bit.. again... and after the inevitable long upward bit.. where everyone was "winning" ... it has hit a peak.. and dropped off a cliff.

So I disagree that Maggie made it worse.. she did what was right LONG TERM, and she never saw the love come back for those hard years. My Dad lost his job, we lived on the bread line for 6 years of my childhood, I remember it, and he was bitter.. but not any more. He knows it was right.

Like closing the coal mines. It was the right thing to do.... long term.

But to move this still further, Vince Cable knows what needs doing, and it's half way between spending and cutting back...

and he's cleverer than me, by around a trillion miles... I'm not sure Gordon really is.

[nichomach]

I agree with some, though not all, of your post, Saracen. I think Brown's redetermination of the dates of the economic cycle has been part of the problem, in the sense that that was used as a justification for more borrowing than would otherwise have been the case, and the departure from the golden rule hasn't helped much. Our perspective on the Thatcher stuff is, I suspect, always going to be somewhat different . Regarding your closing points, I agree with a lot of that, I just think that the cuts the Tories are proposing are too rapid and too much of a shock to the system; I think that an economy which has significant activity due to money moving through it will prove inherently better placed to ride out the hurt than one where economic activity has been significantly curtailed.

[Zak33]

All so grumpy!

Not me bud.. light at the end of the tunnel.

A few people here know me quite well in real life and I said, in January, that this was the year to make money if you found how...

The recession will make me richer... I'm doing ok tbh. Yeah, I had a pay cut, but I also had an HOURS cut, and I see my little lad 2 days more per month

It also reduced my mortgage interest dramatically , by more than my pay cut. The rest is paying off the house faster.

I was offered a cheap car, and I'm glad I took it.

and Sair's found more work, working part time freelance, than we ever would have dreamed, because companies have laid people off and then needed temp people for emergency work.

The only thing we all suffer from at some time is a lack of confidence..... and some of that is just will power alone. I've got that in spades

So KEEP grinding people.... cut back what you must... calculate things (like this thread is discussing) to your advantage, and keep smart

[menthel]

Not me bud.. light at the end of the tunnel.

A few people here know me quite well in real life and I said, in January, that this was the year to make money if you found how...

The recession will make me richer... I'm doing ok tbh. Yeah, I had a pay cut, but I also had an HOURS cut, and I see my little lad 2 days more per month

It also reduced my mortgage interest dramatically , by more than my pay cut. The rest is paying off the house faster.

I was offered a cheap car, and I'm glad I took it.

and Sair's found more work, working part time freelance, than we ever would have dreamed, because companies have laid people off and then needed temp people for emergency work.

The only thing we all suffer from at some time is a lack of confidence..... and some of that is just will power alone. I've got that in spades

So KEEP grinding people.... cut back what you must... calculate things (like this thread is discussing) to your advantage, and keep smart

All true! Some of us (you and I to say the least) have obviously benefitted from relatively good employment, fortuitous mortgage choices and living within our means before this all kicked off! I am lucky to have qualifications that will probably mean I am never out of work- in fact you could say in demand (am currently negociating a new jo at present!). I feel sorry for those that are not in a similar position- all apart from theose who didn't live within their means, anyway!